Tuesday, March 26, 2013

In the past few years, I’ve bought eighty-one leather jackets. Dozens of boots and leather gloves. I’ve purchased pants that cost $5,000. I own a $22,000 coat. This winter I took a tour of Milan’s Fashion Week (all expenses paid by Gucci, in appreciation of my many, many purchases), where I spent tens of thousands more and began to seriously grapple, once and for all, with a compulsion that could cost me more than just my life savings. My name is Buzz Bissinger. I am 58 years old, the best-selling author of ‘Friday Night Lights,’ father of three, husband. And I am a shopaholic.

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Honestly, I already had trouble assimilating the idea that Buzz Bissinger is "a good sportswriter," "a crazy old blog-hating sportswriter," and "the guy who wrote Friday Night Lights" all at the same time. Adding in an addiction to high-end leather clothing? Sure, why not?

If there was a precipitating event for drastic change, it took place in the late summer and fall of 2009 with the departure of two of the most precious people in my life. My wife, Lisa, left to take a job as an administrator at New York University Abu Dhabi. My youngest son went off to Kenyon.

If you believe that NYU-Abu Dhabi exists, then I will give your favorite team Yuni Betancourt.

Why would this be a joke? Some people have strange fetishes. I will never understand the obsession a disturbingly high number of men have with womens' feet, for example, and I doubt Rex Ryan could explain it to me.

I don't actually care whether it's a joke. I've never heard of Friday Night Lights before this and my only exposure to Buzz Bissinger is when he was sitting in a chair looking angry, very angry, as Will Leitch was running rings around him in a discussion about media.

I have no intention to read the many pages of this article; I have no intention to ever care about Buzz Bissinger or the twisted things he's into. If he tells me he has spent $600,000 on Gucci clothing or whatever it is (I thought they just made bags), I will believe him.

I don't find it a joke, but it is sad. Read the article - there's more going on here than the excerpt captures.
(Or not. I don't care about Bissinger either - I haven't read his supposed good stuff but have seen many of his screeds - but the GQ article is interesting.)

NYU-Abu Dhabi is a real college and not something from Garfield. Also, sending someone to Kenyon does not refer to the (initially thought to be a deliberate misspelling of) country of Kenya; it is also a legit college.

This is still messed up though:

I never fit the traditional definition of a sexy male straight or gay—tall, ripped, six- packs within six-packs. I wanted the power that sex provides, all eyes wanting to #### you and you knowing it, and both men's and women's clothing became my venue

Wow, in #18 RDP comes very close to actually saying - for the first time ever? - that he can understand why someone might find a linked story to be surprising or at least interesting. But then he catches himself in #22 and has to reiterate very forcefully that for several independent reasons he does not find it to be interesting.

Healthy people don't drop half a million on clothing. But that's part of what needs to be talking about.

Why does this "need to be talked about"? Who cares? It's an utterly harmless obsession, save for the fact that now a lot of people are laughing at Buzz Bissinger. (Though walking around with the name "Buzz" is probably more mockworthy.)

I RTFA. Short version: Bissinger is extremely pretentious and self-centered, thinks about his clothes constantly, wastes $$$$, not much of writer, father or husband anymore, but seems to think his mid-life crisis is important because it's about him.

Thanks Sean. We realize that now, but something this fantastical this close to April Fool's day will always come under scrutiny.

Why in the world do you keep talking about "this close" to April Fools' Day? Do you understand the concept of April Fools' Day? Jokes for April Fools' Day - as lame as they are - occur on... wait for it... April Fools' Day. Which is April 1st, not March 27th.

Why in the world do you keep talking about "this close" to April Fools' Day? Do you understand the concept of April Fools' Day? Jokes for April Fools' Day - as lame as they are - occur on... wait for it... April Fools' Day. Which is April 1st, not March 27th.

I RTFA. Short version: Bissinger is extremely pretentious and self-centered, thinks about his clothes constantly, wastes $$$$, not much of writer, father or husband anymore, but seems to think his mid-life crisis is important because it's about him.

When I was looking to buy my house I looked at a place where the master bedroom had two big closets. One was pretty standard stuff and the other had about 15 pairs of leather pants and maybe another 10-15 leather jackets of varying length and style.

I couldn't possibly wade through an article like this on a subject so completely uninteresting, but Jesus, if Bissinger's got the money and doesn't wind up in debtor's prison, it's totally his business what he buys, and I say that as someone who never wears anything but jeans except at weddings and funerals.

I own about 8,000 books and some people think that's crazy. I knew a woman (a lawyer turned psychoanalyst) who literally had an entire closet filled with nothing but shoes---not clothes, shoes. I know actual adults who still collect baseball cards and / or comic books, and spend inordinate amounts of time playing video games, not to mention the millions of people with a fetish for sports cars, strip clubs, dogs, cats, craft beer, and / or wine that costs over $100 a bottle. Is there anything wrong with them, too? What would our economy look like without people like that to keep the money moving?

And male fashion fetishists are hardly a new phenomenon, or restricted to narrow classes of people. In fact the first time I read anything like this was in the old leftist magazine Ramparts, when a writer named Gene Marine wrote an article called "My New Clothes". He covered the Black Panthers and then started dressing in the neon-colored solids that were the hallmark of black street fashion in the late 1960's. Bottom line is that we're all a little weird in our many different ways, even sportswriters. (smile)

And male fashion fetishists are hardly a new phenomenon, or restricted to narrow classes of people. In fact the first time I read anything like this was in the old leftist magazine Ramparts, when a writer named Gene Marine wrote an article called "My New Clothes". He covered the Black Panthers and then started dressing in the neon-colored solids that were the hallmark of black street fashion in the late 1960's. Bottom line is that we're all a little weird in our many different ways, even sportswriters. (smile)

1. You're kind of being a killjoy here. Bissinger is an asshole and any opportunity to mock him should be seized. If George Saunders has confessed to a Gucci addiction, I'd probably seriously consider that I was missing out and I should also start buying Gucci. I want to look hip and dangerous, too!
2. The clothes thing is just funny and ridiculous, but the sex club humblebrag in the essay is gross.

This is not at all surprising. Bissinger's been well known as an egomaniac in Philadelphia for a long while. Great writer, though - FNL is a much richer book than the movie or show, and he won a Pulitzer for "A Prayer for the City," which covered Ed Rendell's mayoral administration and has long been on my list.

1. You're kind of being a killjoy here. Bissinger is an ####### and any opportunity to mock him should be seized. If George Saunders has confessed to a Gucci addiction, I'd probably seriously consider that I was missing out and I should also start buying Gucci. I want to look hip and dangerous, too!
2. The clothes thing is just funny and ridiculous, but the sex club humblebrag in the essay is gross.

This probably just reinforces my own weirdness, but I barely even know who Buzz Bissinger is or who he writes for or anything else he's written, and as I said, I didn't read the entire article.

This probably just reinforces my own weirdness, but I barely even know who Buzz Bissinger is or who he writes for or anything else he's written, and as I said, I didn't read the entire article.

You didn't follow the Buzz wars we had here a few years ago? It's the only reason this article was linked as there is nothing baseball related in the article. It turns out the reason Buzz wanted us all to get out of the basement is because he wanted to stock it with assless leather chaps and his collection of Chinese sex slaves.

I wonder what his kids think reading this article. Well, I'm going to inherit a fortune in tacky Gucci clothes that may be valuable if we can scrape off all the crusted ejaculate!

I don't actually care whether it's a joke. I've never heard of Friday Night Lights before this and my only exposure to Buzz Bissinger is when he was sitting in a chair looking angry, very angry, as Will Leitch was running rings around him in a discussion about media.

I have no intention to read the many pages of this article; I have no intention to ever care about Buzz Bissinger or the twisted things he's into. If he tells me he has spent $600,000 on Gucci clothing or whatever it is (I thought they just made bags), I will believe him.

Good ol' RDP. I haven't had cable since early 2005, go out to the movies maybe once a year, have never seen (& have no interest in ever seeing) such BTF cinematic touchstones as Animal House, Caddyshack, Princess Bride , Ferris Bueller's Day Off et al., don't read a newspaper, don't read non-subcultural magazines other than SI, haven't even had radio in my car in 6 months & think "celebrity culture" in general is an argument for resurrecting & importing the Red Army Faction & tweaking its mission statement ... & yet Ray makes me feel like I immerse myself in the pop culture seas 24/7.

This probably just reinforces my own weirdness, but I barely even know who Buzz Bissinger is or who he writes for or anything else he's written, and as I said, I didn't read the entire article.

You didn't follow the Buzz wars we had here a few years ago?

If I did, it's long slipped down my memory hole, and anyway if you've read one stupid sportswriter you've read them all. "Buzz Bissinger" is one of those thousands of names that sort of float around in the space occupied by "Justin Lieber", "Justin Timberlake", and "Britney Spears", meaning that I've heard them mentioned often enough to figure out that they're probably all real people in a technical sense, but beyond that they just all kind of blend together in one big blob of interchangeable nothingness. About the only affect all those Justins have ever had on my subconscious is that for about a year or so after he first came up, I thought that Justin was the first name of the Red Sox second baseman. Of course now I know that his first name is really Petunia.

It's the only reason this article was linked as there is nothing baseball related in the article. It turns out the reason Buzz wanted us all to get out of the basement is because he wanted to stock it with assless leather chaps and his collection of Chinese sex slaves.

And he wants to be our Latex salesman!

I wonder what his kids think reading this article. Well, I'm going to inherit a fortune in tacky Gucci clothes that may be valuable if we can scrape off all the crusted ejaculate!

I'm surprised that any long-time posters wouldn't know who Bissinger is - he's been a or the subject of a great many threads here over the years.

I don't think the clothing part is that interesting - it's the weird mix of self-awareness, cluelessness, narcissism, and desperation ... a mid-life crisis writ large. (Believe me, I also see the appeal in Shooty's call to mock a very public jerk.)

I just learned that Buzz Bissinger isn't a character from the Tank McNamara comic strip.... so that's something...

zonk, have you not been reading Tank McNamara: Crisis of Insolent Pervs?

1. You're kind of being a killjoy here. Bissinger is an ####### and any opportunity to mock him should be seized. If George Saunders has confessed to a Gucci addiction, I'd probably seriously consider that I was missing out and I should also start buying Gucci. I want to look hip and dangerous, too!

As usual, Shooty gets right to the heart of the matter. The difficulty is that Bissinger has pulled a clever jujitsu move and set up so many targets for mockery that I am paralyzed by indecision about where to begin. I've narrowed it down to either his terrible aesthetic taste or his need to sing his own praises of his own sexual prowess.

I wonder what his kids think reading this article. Well, I'm going to inherit a fortune in tacky Gucci clothes that may be valuable if we can scrape off all the crusted ejaculate!

Damn! Shooty's managed to nail both targets at once! I can't top this.

At first glance this (if true) would appear to me to be a compulsion, not an addiction. There is no chemical dependency like with nicotine, cocaine, heroin, alcohol, etc. He's not going to get the DTs if he stops, and I doubt he's buying leather goods every single day like a true addict.

He seems to have a psychological compulsion. More like OCD than an addiction. I'd say the same thing for 'sex addiction', in the cases where that's not just a cover for a powerful, rich dude caught with his pants down.

There are only two times a man should wear leather in public (what you do in private is your own business). He can wear leather if it is for a movie with a budget of at least 40 million dollars and he can wear leather if he wears it while driving a motorcycle but he better be near that damn bike at all times otherwise he looks like a doofus. Also it can only be black (and not shiny black) or brown (basic black or brown).

There are only two times a man should wear leather in public (what you do in private is your own business). He can wear leather if it is for a movie with a budget of at least 40 million dollars and he can wear leather if he wears it while driving a motorcycle but he better be near that damn bike at all times otherwise he looks like a doofus. Also it can only be black (and not shiny black) or brown (basic black or brown).

What about a leather car coat or bomber jacket? Those are pretty middle of the road.

Some of the discussion in this thread is a bit reminiscent of my research at the moment. Where the Duke of Buckingham's frilly clothes (French, Spanish and Italian styles) "make the handsomest man look like another thing". Though velvet more than leather is what they were most worried about back then.

What about a leather car coat or bomber jacket? Those are pretty middle of the road.

A grown man shouldn't be wearing a bomber jacket, leather or otherwise unless of course you somehow find yourself flying the Memphis Belle and it is 1944. Car coats are perfectly acceptable just don't wear a leather one. Leather is for bikers, celebrities, and kids.

#80, no medical knowledge here, but my understanding is that it gets labeled as an addiction in large part because the neurological mechanism in gambling/shopping addiction is more similar to other types of (chemical) addictions than in most compulsions. The act of buying something/dropping another quarter in the slot sets off the same neurochemical reactions as you'd see in other addictions, rather than being involved in an anxiety merry-go-round that is very immediate and hard for the person to break away from like in OCD.

It depends on your local milieu, McCoy. The first time I went to New Mexico I kept literally bursting out laughing because people were actually wearing cowboy hats and cowboy boots while walking around the mall. Not one person in a million does that in Pennsylvania. People would assume they were getting paid minimum wage to hand out flyers for a steakhouse or something.

There must be places where wearing leather all the time is not noteworthy. Bissinger's mistake, among many other mistakes, seems to be staying in the suburbs of Philadelphia while undergoing his metamorphosis into a high-maintenance fashionista.

Celebrities that try to project youth and while they are "performing". Meaning when they are on stage or on the red carpet or whenever they are "working". Some 45 year old celebrity (like say Vince Vaughn) simply sitting at a Starbucks dressed up like how Buzz is in those linked photos would look just as ridiculous as Buzz did.

I wouldn't call it an addiction per se, and I do ride a motorcycle so I guess I am covered - I have a few pieces from Aero Leather in Scotland that are just awesome and very pricey. But it's classic stuff - that Gucci business would have worked out better for Buzz if he'd spent some of the dough on a Bowflex or something.